Nutrient dumping in freshwater ecosystems is posing a hazard to human health, the environment and the economy in the United States. Increased exposure to these marine hazards is proven to deteriorate human health.
“Contamination of water sources by toxins is affecting our drinking water supply. Some of these toxins produce liver disease, liver cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s,” said Larry Brand, professor at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science at the University of Miami.
Last month, Brand presented his views on marine hazards to human health at the Austral Summer XI Institute hosted in Concepcion, Chile. Nutrient runoff in freshwater ecosystems and the ocean can cause red tides, harmful algae blooms that produce natural toxins and deplete dissolved oxygen, Red tides directly impact the seafood industry, as evidenced by the red tide that wiped out Chile’s seafood industry a decade ago, noted Brand.
Excessive nutrient dumping is harmful to the environment and the economy. Still, a degree of ambivalence from politicians prohibits public policy from regulating marine pollution and nutrient runoff.
“It’s a political issue. It’s pretty clear that we need to reduce nutrient runoff in our water, but trench economic forces don’t want to do that,” continued Brand.
Improved sewage systems will decrease nutrient runoff into the U.S. water supply. Updating water infrastructure in the U.S. is fundamentally linked to protecting human health and preserving the ecological integrity of drinking water. But, gaps in funding for the maintenance and repair of aging infrastructure, coupled with a lack of political will to update systems, stymies efforts to improve faulty sewage systems.
Unregulated agricultural fertilization contributes to the contamination of water supplies and domestic environmental degradation. “There is a dead zone downstream in the Mississippi River due to fertilizer runoff. There are virtually no laws that prevent farmers from dumping huge amounts of fertilizer on to their farms,” informed Brand.
Fertilizer runoff from farms upstream of the Mississippi River creates tension and environmental inequity between upstream and downstream states. Uncontrolled fertilizer use by farmers upstream adversely affects ecosystems and markets dependent on them for economic development.
Nutrient run-off degrades tourist locales that rely on the lush environment of the natural habitat to attract visitors. Approximately 90 percent of coral reefs in the Florida Keys have been lost due to contamination from nutrient runoff. Sea grass meadows, the nursing ground for fish and crabs, are also compromised because of this pollution. Fragile ecosystems that support the seafood industry and the livelihood of local fishermen are being jeopardized by runoff double fold.
As the natural habitat of fisheries corrodes, the amount of fish bought and sold will decrease. Moreover, a lot of chemicals that are dumped into oceans, such as endocrine disrupters and PCB, bio magnify in the food chain. Hence, high levels of mercury in tuna and swordfish are an immediate concern for its deleterious impact on consumer health and the seafood industry.
Mobilizing funds and the political will to combat toxic nutrient run-off in the United States is a complex undertaking. Once variables including increased medical expenses for treating sicknesses due to poor water quality, ecological degradation, and decrease in seafood industry revenues are factored into the equation, one can anticipate a more proactive response at the decision making level.
Resolving the issue of marine hazards to human health cannot be treated as an isolated issue. Rather, it involves a cross disciplinary, multi-faceted approach to improving water infrastructure and appropriately analyzing the stratified impact of excessive nutrient runoff into water systems. Once the full scope of the economic, public health, and environmental risks of nutrient run off are understood, it will be prioritized on the eco-political agenda.
The picture above is a satellite shot of a red tide.
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